


Low Volume

by clubstocrews23



Category: WTFock | Skam (Belgium)
Genre: Clingy Sander Driesen, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:00:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22169797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clubstocrews23/pseuds/clubstocrews23
Summary: Robbe has the boys over to keep him company while he waits for Sander to feel better.
Relationships: Sander Driesen/Robbe IJzermans
Comments: 6
Kudos: 336





	Low Volume

Robbe invited the boys over in the afternoon to play videogames, just so he didn’t have to sit alone for the rest of the day. The apartment was too quiet. His mother went out for dinner with his father, to some fancy place. Most of the time, it was just her and himself in the house. It kind of made him miss Milan, Zoë, and Senne—they were always loud, even when they didn’t mean to be. 

His own home seemed foreign in the absence of noise.

Still, the quiet had a purpose. He left his bedroom door open, so he could have a clear line of sight to his bed from the couch by the television. A human shape underneath the comforter rolled over every so often. Sometimes, a pale arm reached outward from the cocoon of blankets to pull them closer. Robbe knew it would be best to leave Sander alone like this for a little while, to rest, but he still didn’t want the sleeping boy out of his sight. It was also kind of picturesque: Sander, engulfed in every comfort item Robbe had to offer.

The boys arrived a whopping five minutes after Robbe asked them in the group chat to come. Jens first, Moyo second, Aaron last. He tried to tell them all to keep their voices down when they first walked in, but it took a while for the idea to catch on. When Jens entered, he practically burst with the loudest, “Guess what, dude!” that Robbe had ever heard before launching into a complex story about Jana and a house party. Only Moyo sensed the situation right away and communicated through whispers and nods.

They all sat down on the couch to begin the game. 

“Why are we being quiet?” asked Aaron, shortly after being killed for the first time. He respawned.

Robbe tired to gesture to the open bedroom door without looking away from the television screen. “I’m trying to let Sander sleep.”

“Sander’s here?”

“Yes, in the bedroom.”

Moyo interjected, the only person to use a sensible volume. “Depressive?”

The truth was, Robbe didn’t know what was wrong. He read a couple books about bipolar disorder and found that a lot of the symptoms could be confused for stress (and vice versa). He thought that all of Sander’s symptoms lined up with a depressive episode: excessive sleeping, self-depreciation, and not eating. It still seemed wrong to diagnose it as one.

Moyo understood, even when Robbe didn’t respond. “Does his mother know?”

“Yes.” Robbe called her first thing when he suspected, just to be safe. Guilt surfaced in his mind; he feared he would become like Britt if he micromanaged Sander because of his condition. It also made everything a lot easier to know that Sander’s mother knew.

“Shouldn’t you be in there with him?” Aaron’s voice dropped to a whisper halfway through the sentence when Jens shushed him.

Robbe shook his head. “He needs to sleep right now.”

“Amber said it’s nice to go to sleep together. It feels safe. I know he’s not Amber, and it’s different—” 

They both turned to Moyo, to hear his opinion. Moyo pushed a fancy combination of buttons on his controller and fell off the top of a building. He cursed under his breath. Jens’s character, a tall dude with full armor and blue hair, stopped beside Moyo’s corpse and began to loot his inventory.

Moyo reached out to slap Jens, barely brushing the other boy’s knee. “Is nothing sacred?”

For the next ten minutes, Robbe sat back on the couch and watched Jens and Moyo argue over the ethics of friendly fire in a game they were technically supposed to playing together. The fact that they had to whisper compounded the entertainment value. Only months earlier, sitting like this gave Robbe the impression of his own isolation and the horror that his friends would leave him completely. Now, all he could conjure was contentment. Aaron, oblivious to the fight, went around shooting random NPCs. 

When Robbe looked away from the melee, Sander stood in the doorway, eyes squinted as if he were not quite awake. Robbe needed to blink once to be sure he wasn’t hallucinating. He wore one of Robbe’s sweatshirts. It was a little short on the arms—Robbe had guessed as much when he left it for Sander to use—but Sander made up for the difference by wrapping the rest of his body in a fleece throw blanket that Robbe’s mother dug out of the closet for him. He didn’t acknowledge the boys or the videogames. 

Robbe set down his controller and stood up. “Sorry, did we wake you?”

Sander shook his head. The blanket dragged along the floor behind him as he took a step closer.

“Can I get you something?”

He shook his head again.

“Do you want me to come in there?”

This was the first time in days Sander had gotten out of bed for anything besides a trip to the bathroom. Maybe Robbe shouldn’t have invited the boys, should have stayed beside Sander while he slept so he didn’t feel the need to get up like this. Robbe tried to step over Jens to make his way to Sander and the bedroom, causing Jens to drop his controller. He watched as Jens’s character took a bullet to the chest and collapsed into the pixelated earth.

“Damnit, Robbe. What the hell!”

If he was fazed by the noise around him, Sander didn’t show it. His expression stayed blank. “I’m okay. I’ll come to you.” He made his way around the couch and sat on the end cushion. When Robbe looked back at him, he patted the adjacent cushion for Robbe to return.

Now that Jens’s character was dead, there was nothing to stop Robbe from climbing back over him to sit down next to Sander. He admired Sander’s eyes. Even with dark circles looped around the bottoms and redness pricking at their edges, he had yet to witness anything he’d find more beautiful. Especially since they were open. He was used to seeing Sander asleep.

Sander returned Robbe’s gaze. “I missed you.” A conversation for the two of them alone. The rest of the boys pretended not to hear.

“I wasn’t gone.”

“I was.” He let Robbe smooth down a patch of bedhead. “For a little, I think.”

“Well, are you back now?”

“I think so.”

“Good, I missed you too.” 

Robbe’s character, standing still on the screen, exploded into pieces as a rogue grenade landed nearby. Robbe didn’t really mind. He could respawn in a moment.

“Is it alright if I kiss you?” he asked Sander. Jens turned to make a face, something conveying the sentiment ‘really, right in front of my salad?’ but said nothing in protest.

“Yeah, that’s alright.”

The way they connected was perfect, like seeing a rainbow in the sky after a day of rain or watching snow fall outside while lounging in front of a fire. Homelike. Sander didn’t appear to be in the mood to make out, so they broke apart after a single kiss. It was still seventh heaven to Robbe. Sander even gave him a tiny smile, something he wanted to freeze in his memory like a photograph.

Aaron looked back and forth between Sander, Robbe and the television. “Does this mean I can talk in my normal voice now?”

Sander curled up on his couch cushion and lay his head in Robbe’s lap. “Go ahead.”

He took Robbe’s hand in his own and played with it like a child, flexing each finger as if to see if it would bend. As hard as it was to play a video game with one hand, Robbe did his best. It was moments like these he knew everything was going to be okay.


End file.
